


All Steamed Up

by gumbridge



Category: Motorcity
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-10
Updated: 2012-06-10
Packaged: 2017-11-07 10:32:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/430087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gumbridge/pseuds/gumbridge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck would like the coffee shop where he works, The Burners, to buy a new espresso machine. He would also like Mike to listen to him for once, if at all possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Steamed Up

**Author's Note:**

> This AU is the fault of [Tanyart](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tanyart), and my writing Motorcity fic at all is the fault of Tumblr user @technokinetic. Thanks, friends.

"No," says Chuck. "No, no, no, no, and, additionally, no."

"I'm not actually hearing any reasons in that pile of negatives," Mike says, because Mike is an asshole, and Chuck needs a new best friend.

"I can't keep fixing this old workhorse forever," Dutch puts in, mild. "Sally's going to fall down and not get up at some point." Dutch has coffee grounds smeared across the bridge of his nose and huge brown stains on the front of his shirt. It's possible that by now none of them own a single shirt not stained with coffee. Maybe Julie?

"You don't need to fix it forever!" Chuck's voice goes high when he gets stressed and he hates how it sounds, how it makes people take him less seriously. "I have a plan! An economic plan! I have gone over everything and if you keep Sally running even eighty-five percent of the time for the next three months, we will have enough to buy a new machine! A new machine without debt or a loan or dipping into the tip jar!"

The tip jar is not a jar so much as a piggy bank, a pink one from the dollar store down the street. It has a little pair of sunglasses on its perfect porcine snout, and the entire staff of The Burners is more protective of it than they are of their wallets, probably.

"It would be cheaper to just build one ourselves, and Dutch would enjoy the challenge, come on," says Mike, Mike who is trying to sound charming and reasonable, Mike who is not listening to any of Chuck's own eminently sensible points, organized into bullet points for convenience.

Chuck pulls at his hair. He is going to go grey in the next three years and it is going to be mainly Mike's fault and he will make Mike pay for both the hairdye and the therapy, right out of his Burners paycheck. "We don't have the time or the money to waste on Dutch's experiments, it'll take forever to fine-tune it, if we can't produce a consistent flavour profile we will lose our customers and our starred review in the Detroit Foodist and Deluxe will buy up the place and take over and _it will not be my fault_!"

Mike just waits for Chuck to slow down, sits there on the high stool behind the cash with one leg propped up on the other knee, arms folded with this amused tiny smile like Chuck is a comedy act. Two thumbs up. He's here till Thursday, folks. Try the scones, Jacob made them special.

Chuck has a printout, an actual printout from the actual Internet, of an espresso machine, in his wallet. Possibly in the little pocket where other, more normal, people would have a photo of their beloved dog or child, but Chuck has been working at Burners for long enough now that coffee is his entire life. He fumbles the page out now, smooths it out, shoves it across the counter at Mike.

"Just look at it," he wails. "Casadio Dieci A3! Boiler capacity of fifteen litres! Thermosyphon and a thermal balancing system! Multi-directional steam wands! _Free shipping_! I don't care how good Dutch is at fixing Sally, he will never be able to build a new espresso machine as good as a Dieci A3!"

"I totally could, come on," Dutch puts in, like he's got little gears spinning away in his brain already, like he can't wait to pull his horrible soldering visor on and build something nobody else can use with ten arms and more looping tubes than the entire human circulatory system, like he's offended at the slight to his MacGyver Mythbustering ability to build a functional robot out of a piece of sandpaper and two pennies.

"Do you think the customers would even trust a machine built out of scraps? They get freaked out enough when our regular machines make those weird screechy noises!"

"The regulars won't get freaked out," says Mike, placid. Mike is a _tool_.

"I love the regulars, the regulars are great, Claire is a regular--" and oh great now Dutch is laughing at him, Chuck is probably red enough to match the Burners logo, Chuck would like to sink into the floor right now and never come back up "--but regulars do not pay all of our bills, and if we can keep Sally on life support for just a few weeks we can get a shiny new machine that our customers will think is amazing, and maybe we can pull away some people from Deluxe and get new customers who aren't terrified by our current horrible rickety clanky steampunk espresso machine, and profits will go up, and we can keep our jobs and Jacob will be happy and Abraham Kane _won't_ be!"

Aaaand of course, the way to Mike's heart is through his spite, and the line about Kane has him sitting up. Mike shoves his hair out of his eyes and finally takes a serious look at the Ringtons Beverages printout and, eventually, looks up at Chuck and says, "If we get this one, I want to paint it red."

" _Fine_ ," says Chuck, Chuck who would like to fall over and die now, because every single person in this bar is ridiculous except for him, and Mike and Dutch are high-fiving over the idea of a Ferrari-red espresso machine. They'll probably end up modding the machine in Dutch's dad's garage and accidentally giving it the capability to make hot chocolate and Molotov cocktails. Chuck lets himself slump until his face is pressed against the counter, and it's nice and cool but a little sticky, so he should probably do a wipedown soon, and he should go check up on what Jacob is concocting and ask again if it really is okay for them to lay out that sort of money on a new machine--

Mike pushes a latte at him over the smooth counter and Chuck sighs heavily, lets the air flutter at his bangs. He sits up and scoots his stool closer and takes a drink.

The coffee is, as usual, perfect.


End file.
